I write to you from the Cotswolds as my train makes its stately progress from London to the fine city of Hereford.
I have been down in the capital catching up with some folk, making new connections and failing to buy a new ukulele.
Networking by any other name.
And I have been reflecting, as so often, on the importance of rapport.
Meeting people, smiling, shaking hands, drinking coffee makes a real difference. It is much easier to pick up the phone to people you have already met than to dial into the abyss.
Emails have more tone and nuance if you have seen and heard the person behind the letters.
And this is why networking is a skill and practice so valued in business. It has real monetary value. People are more likely to hire you if they have met you, liked you, have developed some rapport with you.
Even businesses selling into the public sector, where the fearsome OJEU rules, you would imagine, drive such intangible aspects as rapport out of the calculation strongly value the importance of meeting people, making connections, building trust.
It is no surprise. Rapport is a set of behaviours we have developed over evolutionary time that help us understand one another. The corollary is that we don’t understand people so well until we have developed rapport.
I do a lot of training and in particular I work with communications staff in “Cat 1 responders” a nice piece of jargon to describe the organisations responsible for looking after you in an emergency. Essentially people with blue lights on their cars, local authorities, bits of the NHS and the Environment Agency (NRW And SEPA in Wales and Scotland respectively).
I can tell within seconds of walking into a room of comms people from different agencies if they have met before. There is an ease and a sense of shad understanding that is lacking in a room of strangers.
In an emergency the comms staff with good rapport are much more likely to get on the phone to each other early and crucially to understand each other better. Ultimately the timeliness and effectiveness of communication in an emergency could alter the number of people killed or injured.
This is not a small thing.
But it easy to overlook or to de-prioritise.
We have tools to help us. Social networking tools provide some degree of the real person and interaction via these is better than nothing (or by email). Video chat on Skype or Google Hangouts is even better. But real human beings meeting real human beings is always best.
Within and between organisations we need to provide space to develop relationships. Not as a short-term functional goal but as a long-term investment in the flexibility and effectiveness of our workforce.
Given the massive pressure on the local public sector that may seem like a forlorn hope. But if we cannot find the space to invest in rapport it will become harder to deliver change.
And the consequences could be extremely serious.